On Tuesday, dozens of students were pepper sprayed by campus police at Santa Monica College while protesting outside a Board of Trustees meeting.
At least two people were hospitalized and several others injured when a crowd of 100 people tried to enter the room where the meeting was being held. Students were opposed to plans for a two-tier tuition scheme, whereby the college will charge students triple for popular courses that fill up quickly.
Videos posted on the internet showed a crowd of students gathered outside the meeting room chanting, “Let us in!” and “Shame on you!”
The campus police refused to let them in during the public comments section, saying the room was at capacity. An overflow room was set up but could not accommodate the number of people there. When students demanded a larger room, this request was denied.
Parents in Adelanto, California, recently experienced the consequences of the state’s so-called “parent trigger” law, which allows public schools to be changed to charters on the initiative of parents. As events in Adelanto demonstrate, this law is susceptible to systematic abuse by advocates of privatized education.
The Adelanto Elementary School District board of education voted at the beginning of March to deny a petition to transform Desert Trails Elementary school into a charter. Petitioners, backed by an organization calling itself Parent Revolution, claim to have gathered signatures from the parents of 70 percent of Desert Trails students. Opponents of Parent Revolution claim that many of the signatures were gathered under false pretenses.
According to a federal government agency, student loan debt in the US surpassed 1 trillion dollars “several months ago.” The finding, reported by a spokesman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to a banking conference in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, is “much larger” (in his words) than other recent estimates.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a study in early March suggesting that the total student debt had reached $870 billion. The new figure is 16 percent higher than that estimate. This staggering amount is greater than the total owed by Americans on their credit cards or auto loans.
The CFPB announcement, which signifies that a considerable portion of the younger generation will be condemned to decades of debt, will not create a ripple within the American political and media establishment.
In Los Angeles, California, the state governing board of Santa Monica Community College has introduced a two-tiered system to charge several times more for high-demand classes.
Certain classes will now be offered at a rate of $220 per unit. This is nearly five times the average per unit rate, which is slated to increase from $36 to $46 beginning this summer.
The new scheme is unprecedented and will serve to effectively price many working class student out of the most important classes, and therefore out of the college altogether.
The moves in Santa Monica will likely become a model for colleges throughout the state and country. There is a coordinated attack on public education throughout California and at the federal level, with colleges and universities at all levels being starved of funding.
The emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools announced March 13 the next stage in the destruction of public education in Detroit, presenting a list of 15 schools, including six high schools, which will be removed from DPS at the end of the current school year and transferred to the state-run Education Achievement System.
Roy Roberts, the former GM executive who came out of retirement to take the $250,000-a-year position as emergency manager, designated Central, Denby, Henry Ford, Mumford, Pershing and Southeastern high schools as “low-performing,” as well as nine middle and elementary schools.
The EAS and its overseer, the Education Achievement Administration, were established with much fanfare last summer by Roberts and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, as a state-sponsored alternative supposedly designed to improve “failed” public schools.
A new survey finds discouragement among American teachers at an all-time high. According to the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher,” released Wednesday, disaffection from the teaching profession is being driven by budget-cutting and lack of job security in the public schools.
Over 50 percent of teachers said that they had reservations about their jobs, the highest level recorded in the survey since 1989. Job satisfaction has plummeted by 15 percentage points since 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. Fully one third said they would probably leave their field within the next five years, up from one quarter only three years ago.
The California State Capitol Building in Sacramento was the scene of a series of demonstrations Monday against further tuition fee hikes, budget cuts and privatization at the state’s public universities. The peaceful student demonstrators were met with a large police presence of several hundred officers in full riot gear from the California Highway Patrol, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and the Sacramento City Police Department.
Some 76 protesters were arrested for refusing to leave the capitol building after it closed at 6 pm. They were later released.
The Florida legislature is pushing to finalize a proposed budget that calls for a $400 million reduction to Florida universities, with $103 million coming from University of South Florida’s (USF) 2012-13 budget. On February 13, students at USF, in Tampa, received email notification of potential budget cuts coming down from the state. The email highlighted an address made by USF System President Judy Genshaft concerning the cuts.
After the finalization of the budget by the Senate, the House, which has already passed its budget, is to work together with the Senate to finalize a joint budget that will go back to both chambers for approval. The deadline for this work is March 9, after which Florida Governor Rick Scott can either approve or veto it.
New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and the statewide teachers union, the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), reached agreement on February 16 to introduce a system for evaluating the effectiveness of New York state’s teachers based primarily on student standardized test scores.
The deal followed a threat by President Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, to withhold $700 million in funds granted under the 2010 federal “Race to the Top” (RTTT) program, which requires such an evaluation system. A week later, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Department of Education (DOE) released to the media the scores for 18,000 teachers based on student testing.
New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and the statewide teachers union, the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), reached agreement on February 16 to introduce a system for evaluating the effectiveness of New York state’s teachers based primarily on student standardized test scores.
The deal followed a threat by President Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, to withhold $700 million in funds granted under the 2010 federal “Race to the Top” (RTTT) program, which requires such an evaluation system. A week later, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Department of Education (DOE) released to the media the scores for 18,000 teachers based on student testing.
